Wakatipu High’s United Nations – 62 nationalities now represented

Now fostering the young brains of 62 different nationalities and ethnicities, Wakatipu High School has employed a Portuguese Language Support person, and this week held a special Brazilian evening for Brazilian students’ parents.

At the start of 2023 the school represented 43 ethnicities and that number just continues to grow, new students joining the school all the time, lately from new nationalities like Nepal and in Northern Africa.

Principal Oded Nathan says they’re doing their best to ensure students from around the world feel welcome in what’s becoming an “increasingly diverse school community”, reflective of the Wakatipu community at large.

“We’ve just started looking at some of the larger ethnic groups, starting with our Brazilian student population, and we’ve just employed a Portuguese Language Support person to help enable good communication between school and home, along with gaining a better understanding of how to support students and their families,” Nathan says. “We ran our first parent evening on Tuesday for Brazilian students and their parents.”

They’ll be addressing the next largest ethnic group – Filipino students, next. “We have a large Filipino community so we will look at having an evening with them soon,” Nathan says.

“As we’re becoming increasingly diverse, we’re also getting larger groups of some ethnicities so we’re wanting to further engage with the kids and their families to understand their experience here and then we can adapt accordingly,” he says. “Sometimes just helping them understand our expectations around attendance and homework can make a big difference.”

Not all students have grown up with such wonderful access to, and familiarity with the outdoors either. “We’ve noticed when it comes to school camps that some students new to New Zealand in the junior years are a bit more apprehensive about going to Greenstone Camp or Branches Camp. We’re looking at what the roadblocks are, to ensure they have the right gear and resources, and are confident around water,” Nathan says.

“These are things that we take for granted in New Zealand – being in the outdoors, but for some who’ve recently arrived in this country that may not be second nature.”

The school also currently has 27 international fee-paying foreign students, some from the likes of Italy and Germany, representing even more countries.

The school’s head girl, New Zealand U18 Women’s Ice Hockey player Manuella Sanches Pedrosa, was also on hand, along with the new Brazilian Portuguese Language Support person, at Tuesday’s Brazilian evening, to help with translation. Nathan says it was an opportunity for parents and students to ask questions and for the school to “further foster those relationships”.

“Our biggest challenge is to make sure people coming from overseas, who’ve made these significant shifts moving from a different country, feel like they belong,” he says. “We want to build that sense of belonging for them, which is easier said than done. Some travel quite significant distances,” Nathan says. “As our ethnic population grows and more students enrol; we can use the experiences of those that have come before them to try and ease the transition to Queenstown and Wakatipu High School.”